A Conspiracy of Wolves

‘I have my reasons. I pray you, respect my request.’ A slight smile that did nothing to warm his wide, dark, thickly lashed eyes. An interesting face, unscarred, yet with the uneven color and roughened texture of someone who spent much time at sea. His heft was characteristic of a muscular man going soft as he aged and grew less active. Magda had called him a merchant adventurer – though more the latter, suspecting he earned more of his wealth by eliminating his partners’ competition than by his eye for a bargain. For such a man to be so disquieted by an encounter with a dog, and now this secrecy. What had so shaken him? And why must it be a secret?

Secrecy added cost to treatment for those who had the coin – Magda’s rule, as it afforded her the means to care for those who were unable to pay her.

And, indeed, when Alisoun named her fee, Crispin did not object, drawing the silver from his scrip without comment.

She handed him the pouch of calendula powder, with instructions.

‘I am grateful to you, Mistress Alisoun. May God bless you for the work you do.’

She stepped out the door after him, glad to see that she had worked quickly enough that the tide was just beginning to come in and his crossing should be easy even in the dark.

‘Did you encounter the dog nearby?’ She hoped it a sufficiently innocuous question. ‘I thought to forage for roots at dawn. But having tasted blood, it might be keen for more.’

‘Near enough,’ he said. ‘But if you have foraged in the forest all this while without mishap, I should think you will be safe. May God watch out for you, Mistress Alisoun.’

Crispin bowed to her and set off across the rocks, his boots getting only a little wet in the slowly rising water. I should think you will be safe …

Why? Had someone set the dog on him? He’d said he would have been a fool to challenge it. Yet why else would it attack? And why had it not simply kept its distance as wild animals commonly did in such encounters? All this, and his denial of the earlier baying, unsettled her.

As she lingered in the doorway staring at his back, she caught a movement to her left, upriver. A figure stood at the edge of a stand of trees. Forty, fifty paces up the riverbank. Watching Magda’s house? Or Crispin Poole?

When he did not seem to notice the watcher she thought to warn the injured man, but he had already reached the bank. She might wade across, but why? He’d not endeared himself to her, with his selfish refusal to alert the community. She had fulfilled her duty as a healer, tending his wound.

Glancing back toward the stand of trees, Alisoun saw no one. ‘My imagination?’ she asked the sea serpent. No response. Not a good sign. Once inside she strung her bow and set it near the door, with a quiver of arrows. The tide might be coming in, but she would take no chances.

A week later, Alisoun woke shortly after dawn, having dreamt of Crispin Poole being savaged by a hell-hound, a giant creature, black, with blazing eyes. Shivering, she stoked the fire, lit a lamp, and checked the young woman on the pallet by the fire, grateful for an absorbing task. Young Wren’s head was cool. No fever, God be thanked. A miscarriage, the bleeding afterward perhaps more than what might be expected, nothing worse. And, for this serving girl, a blessing. A child would bring only grief.

Gently shaking the girl awake, Alisoun helped her sit up so she might drink the honey water laced with herbs to stop the bleeding.

‘If I hurry, my mistress will never know I was gone the night,’ said the girl in a hoarse whisper. Her throat was dry from the herbs. The honey in warm water should help that.

‘Drink that down,’ Alisoun said. ‘Then we will talk.’

The girl tilted back her head and drank it down, holding out the empty wooden bowl for inspection, her pale eyes watching Alisoun’s face for a sign of argument. ‘I need the work. I’ve nowhere else to go.’

This is how it was. ‘Of course. You’ve no fever. Let’s see if you can stand.’

With Alisoun’s assistance, the girl swung her feet down and rose with nary a wobble, even taking a few hesitant steps. ‘Oh!’ She lifted her skirt, saw the watery blood trickling down the inside of her short, fleshy legs.

‘Tend it as you do your courses and no one’s the wiser,’ said Alisoun. ‘Your womb is empty.’

‘Was it–?’

Alisoun shook her head. ‘Too early to know aught.’

‘Will you help me to the riverbank?’